An unexpected result?

A few days ago I was at a regular monthly lunch, and the conversation moved to the likely result in the NSW elections. Most of the company thought that Gladys would get back, and the common use of ‘Gladys’ tells you something. She may not be a great Premier (I have no inside knowledge), but she is widely seen as straightforward. She is no beauty (cf Kristina Keneally, a former Labor woman Premier) but that doesn’t matter. She qualifies in terms of the impression she gives of being on top of her job, fearless, and confident. I remember Julia Gillard’s complaint that the media seemed focussed on her (Julia’s) physical appearance and clothes rather than on her policies. I can’t recall any comment about Gladys of that kind: it’s just not seen as relevant.

My guess is that about half of my lunch company would normally vote Labor at elections, but there was no enthusiasm for Michael Daley, the Leader of the Opposition. One man said, acidly, ‘Labor? They haven’t been in the sin-bin long enough!’ And there was some nodding in agreement. When a couple of former Labor ministers are serving time for gross misdeeds it is hard to summon up enthusiasm for their successors. How much did the electorate remember all that? I have no idea.

The final two weeks of the campaign, according to the public opinion polls, made it a race too close to call — a ‘nailbiting battle’, according to news.com.au. In fact, the Coalition seems to have won around 42 per cent of the primary vote and Labor 33 per cent, and that’s a big disparity. The two-party-preferred result was Coalition 51 to Labor’s 49 per cent. The Nationals lost seats to the disgruntled Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, the Liberals lost two seats, Labor picked up two and an Independent was returned. The minor parties and independents won a quarter of the votes, and the preferences of those who voted for them had some powerful effects. Michael Daley made the point, correctly in my view, that the major parties were on the nose, and they needed to do something about it. Proper behaviour by elected parliamentarians would be a good start.

The closest NSW electorate to where we live in Canberra is Monaro, the seat held by the Deputy Premier and Leader of the Nationals, John Barilaro. The media made much of the tightness of the contest there. In fact, he romped home, scoring almost two votes to every one won by his Labor challenger. I no longer know how the polling organisations do their work, and I would agree that the result in seats might have been difficult to predict, given the number of minor parties and independents. For those who are interested, the Shooters and the Greens won almost the same proportion of the primary vote, about 7.5 per cent. But the disparity between the predicted and actual votes is huge. How did that happen? If you add the Greens to Labor and the Shooters to the Coalition you get an outcome of around 52 per cent for the Coalition and 41 per cent for Labor. Did all the voters for independent candidates give Labor their second preference votes? Beats me.

So Gladys has another four years, and her authority, at least for the next few months, will be strong. On the face of it, Daley’s concentrated attack on the Government’s rebuilding of two Sydney football stadiums didn’t work. Maybe no one cared. Labor’s reliance on health, education and social welfare, and the mantra ‘You don’t count!’ at the end of the party ads was similarly ineffective. We will learn more in the next few months.

What does this result mean for the coming Federal elections? Not much, in my view. Even if the NSW result is carried forward for the State in the Federal poll, there are five other states and two Territories where votes will be counted. I doubt that there will be much if any spillover into Queensland or Victoria. On the other hand, the polling organisations didn’t do a great job in New South Wales. Maybe they haven’t any greater accuracy with respect to the whole country. In the past three years, the Coalition has been ahead of Labor in the opinion polls only twice, and then it was a tiny margin. So there is consistency there. It could be consistently poor methodology, too. We will see.

I think Michael Daley’s strictures about the poor standing of MPs probably applies even more forcefully to the Federal arena, and here too behaving as though you are a representative of our people, and not seeing every opportunity to make a buck as an entitlement, would be a great start. I don’t have confidence that either leader is in a position to bring about such a change. I still expect Labor to win in May, but it may be much closer than what is being predicted. The Australian Pubic Opinion Poll tells us that confidence in the future of the country has moved quite noticeably upwards, which is probably a marker for a higher Coalition vote in May — if APOP has it right.

A short note on some climate change essays

Judith Curry, the sanest of the sceptic scientists, in my view, and the most productive in terms of writing, has begun a series of essays summarizing her own position in the climate change domain. A recent one at judithcurry.com explores what is known as RCP8.5 — the worst case of four ‘representative concentration pathways’, sometimes known as ‘business as usual’, which it isn’t, at all. A real business-as-usual scenario would involve simply defining what one understands to be the usual business practice now, and extending it forward more or less indefinitely. RCP8.5 is much more dire. Dr Curry says ‘Most worst-case climate outcomes are associated with climate model simulations that are driven by the RCP8.5 representative concentration pathway (or equivalent scenarios in terms of radiative forcing)’. When we hear that some great climate doom is coming, it is almost certainly based on RCP8.5, which is then fed into the computer models. RCP8.5, to me, is close to bunkum.

Dr Curry points out while one can’t argue that RCP8.5 scenarios are impossible, the assumptions built into it seem most unlikely: an atmospheric CO2 level of more than 936 ppm by 2100 (almost 1100 ppm for the coming AR6, apparently), no greenhouse gas mitigation, very high population growth, high energy intensity of the economy, very high levels of coal use, and low development of technology. It doesn’t have the right smell, at least to me, and I wrote about it in this vein some time ago.

Population growth is not accelerating, if you accept the UN figures, technology development is in no sense at a low level, the CO2 estimates require huge growth in the next decades if the 936 figure, let alone one of 1100, is to be reached, and the logarithmic nature of the effect of increased CO2 on atmospheric temperature seems to be ignored by the model-builders. While coal is still the major source of electricity, gas and oil are getting to be more important. Yes, there is more renewable energy too, but its importance in the big picture is almost trivial.

Dr Curry’s website is worth going to at any time, but at the moment she also references an excellent essay by someone else about why ‘belief’ in science is a sign that the person using the term doesn’t really understand what he or she is talking about. There is another essay by her on policy alternatives for global warming, while she is preparing a new essay on climate sensitivity, which will be a must-read for me, since I regard the concept of climate sensitivity as the Achilles heel of the whole CAGW scare.

Share this:

Join the discussion 155 Comments

Thanks Don, for those interesting thoughts on politics.
Judith Curry observes it’s possible that the Doomsday scenarios could happen but most unlikely. In other words, it’s almost impossible to disprove a negative but we do know the sun isn’t going put out more like just because we emit more CO2.

Don I agree with you about NSW and Gladys, plus I have to agree on the Fed election as well.
I hope I’m wrong about that but I think we’ll have a Shorten Labor govt in a couple of months. Gawwrrd help us.
Dr Judith Curry is always interesting and she is indeed a very sane person to follow compared to some of the crazies who line up to put the boot into her at every opportunity. The Mann creep is probably the worst example.
After decades of their CAGW nonsense I find there are very few people who even understand the basics of past and present climate change and some of the most educated people seem to be the most gullible.
And some get very hostile when you try and correct them about their so called mitigation claims etc.

Thanks Don, for your summary of the NSW elections and comparison with the up-coming federals. Great to have you getting back into all this. I agree that the prognosis is fingers crossed.

If we go left any further than we already are then this mindless Agenda 21 is going to go from creep to sweep.

It never ceases to amaze how intelligent people can come to the conclusion that our less-than-1c global warming that has occurred since the end of the Little Ice Age that coincided with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is:

a] human-caused from our emissions,

b] a huge problem,

c] and we can solve it by removing Australia’s tiny 1.3% CO2 contribution.

All of which, of course, is totally wrong because a] as we are still in the lowest quartile of natural climate variability for the last 80 centuries, we are still well below the average temperatures that we experienced centuries before our current CO2 emissions.. In fact our emissions could just as easily be causing cooling, b] CO2 is the earth’s great fertiliser. Satellites show the earth is greening because of it and world crop production is markedly improving, and c] if we stopped all of our 1.3% of the world’s emission tomorrow it would not make a scrap of difference with the huge increases from emerging economies. If we stopped exporting our clean coal we would not only go broke but some of the world’s dirtiest coals would quickly replace them and create far greater emissions. Emerging economies are building fossil fuel power generators in huge numbers.

But how infantile do you have to be to base your alarmism on these RCP8.5 scenarios when any rational person knows that even harder sciences, like medical science, are famous for their 180 degree about-faces on a regular basis and we all should remain very sceptical of the known unknowns of climate science.

It’s the predatory economic‘s behind climate change that we should be focusing on. We should be challenging banks and finance houses that want
cap and trade. Then superannuation companies, often investing union money in windmills and want legislation to force us to buy their inefficient electricity. There are even coal miners who marshall useful idiots to stand in front of any proposed mines. That’s before you think of the control freaks want to stop people doing things
Try pointing this out in a simple letter to the editor and see how far you get

Don, Fair comment on the NSW election outcome and the prognosis for the Federal result.

On Currey however I beg to differ. From reading her recent posts I am surprised that she has built her case around just one RCP scenario, the extreme one of 8.5. She does admit that her focus is the extreme case but it seems illogical. The IPCC report is based on four scenarios ranging from 2.6 to 4.5 and 6 before what they admit is the extreme and therefore unlikely 8.5.

For each if those they quote probabilities (defined in the report) in verbal terms like “medium confidence”, “high confidence”, etc. Why then does Currey bang on about needing “possibility” levels? I think she is just trying to confuse the unwashed and the argument with word spaghetti.

BJ, do you never suffer finger trouble, typo, mistake? But never mind, be assured that Don and I refer to the writings of the same person.

As for your second point I totally agree, only difference is I think that it applies to both sides of the argument. Case in point some of the posters here who like to pick up long term projections and then roll around the aisles in mirth because the projections do not occur in the near term. That is the core of the argument. The majority (though not all) deniers of the implications of climate change tend to be at the fag end of life and therefore have no skin in the game, whereas younger people who will live to see the outcome are very concerned. Of course there are also those at the high end of the age spectrum who are concerned for the world their children, and their children will live in.

As I am sure you worked out, I was giving your leg a gentle pull with the “Curry/Currey” comment.

Your second last sentence, however, is gratuituously offensive, the offence not lessened by the weasel wording of your last sentence.

That said, re “long term predictions”, the problem for CAGW supporters is that many of what were “long term predictions” in the early 1990s are now failed historical records.

Again, you use the slur “deniers”. I am not aware of any reasonably sentient being who “denies” that the climate changes, nor that there has been some human impact. The real issue is the word “catastrophic”. So far the effects, greening of parts of the globe and increased crop yields, are either benign or beneficial. Raised overnight temperatures in colder parts of the globe are more likely to reduce death rates than increase them.

The forecasts of catastrophes from the early 1990s now look pretty sick. A little attention to the Aesop fable of the boy who cried “wolf” might be helpful.

A final point, what are your practical proposals to slow or stop CAGW, on the assumption that it is potentially catastrophic?

“gratuituously offensive”! Sorry if I offend, but you must be very easily offended.

Saying you agree with climate change because it has always changed is a classic move. Talk about time frames and speed of change. Talk about Alaska in the last few weeks, look at the Arctic Ice stats.

Yes there were extreme claims made in the 90’s, Gore et al, but that does not invalidate the claims of the usually very conservative scientists who work in this field.

In fact that is part of the problem. Scientists are frequently found to be poor public communicators. And as said they are very cautious about predictions. However some, and not just those like Hansen, who deniers love to hate, are being moved to stronger communication because of their increased concerns. In short things are probably worse than most let on.

The IPCC is after all a political creation and to achieve sign off on their summation of world research is inherently difficult and conservative. You do realise the IPCC does not do research don’t you?

And “catastrophic” is a good one. Though we have had increasingly bizarre weather events around the world it is not yet possible to link them directly to CAGW, but as time passes, if events increase in frequency and ferocity, that may be the conclusion. The catsastophe is decades and decades out. But keep in mind my youngest grandson will only be 92 in 2100 so will definitly be affected if even slow change continues. I am concerned for his welfare. So, are you saying you “believe” (a denier word) there will be no catastrophic consequences of staying on the current path?

Anyhow all our arguing here won’t change a thing. But have you been following the development and cost curves of the renewable energy sector. I think it will be economists and accountants that will determine the fate of the world. The only question in my mind is how much change will we continue to inflict on the planet before that takes effect.

Remember there is no Planet B, even with the Trump enthusiasm for the moon and Mars, but that is another whole story.

The “gratuituous” offence was in stating, not merely suggesting, that so-called “deniers” do not have skin in the game because they are old. It was slightly softened by the admission that they might, perhaps, have children and grand children, and might even care about them. I do not have to be easily offended to find that offensive. My youngest grand child will be a sprightly 86 in 2100.

Neither of us is able to predict the future. “No regrets” actions that will not cripple our economy are sensible. Betting everything on “the development and cost curves of the renewable energy sector” is not sensible until we are sure that they will be adequate to keep the lights on in our houses, the power going to operate energy intensive hospitals, and the endurance to support industrial civilisation. At present they cannot do that, and it is stupid to destroy the system that does in the vague hope that “something will turn up”, with apologies to Mr Micawber.

PS, re Arctic ice stats, did you see the news about the Greenland glacier (close enough to the Arctic for you?) “unexpectedly” advancing? As the climateers point out ad nauseum, short term changes are weather, not climate. This goes both ways.

“Case in point some of the posters here who like to pick up long term projections and then roll around the aisles in mirth because the projections do not occur in the near term.”

This is now a bit of a problem for you ,Stu. This stuff has been going on for over 30 years now with the “settled science” meme being prevalent over all that time.

CAGW is not even a strong hypothesis. The hypothesis being that increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will result in accelerated global warming ie global temperatures will increase faster and faster.

The models that climate scientists have built have been based on assumed positive forcings. From those models they have made predictions of what will happen in the real world. What happens in the real world is a test of their hypothesis ie real science.

One of the many predictions made was that the Maldives would disappear below the waves in 30 years if CO2 emissions continued to rise. This scenario was promoted by climate scientists, the IPCC and the government of the Maldives. That prediction was made in 1988.

The government of the Maldives canvassed finding a new homeland for its citizens. It held cabinet meetings under water as publicity stunts to emphasise its coming demise.

The 30 years was up in September 2018 and CO 2 emissions had increased even faster than predicted at the time. What was the real world outcome? The Maldives are still sitting proudly above the waves with no discernible difference.

What action did the Maldives government take other than publicity stunts? It built a new international airport and 20 new tourist resorts!!! These are not the actions of a government which believes in the imminent inundation of its nation.

What was the reaction of the climate scientists? They doubled down. In 2007 they said that emissions were increasing faster than ever and the danger was now critical. Sean levels will rise faster and the Maldives will disappear below the waves by 2100!!

Say what!! Do these clowns have any self awareness whatever?

They outlined an hypothesis. They built models based on that hypothesis. They made predictions based on those models. The predictions demonstrably failed hence the hypothesis has demonstrably failed. Remember, this is settled science not to be questioned.
Any reputable scientist would have recognised this. It is a common occurrence with the scientific method. The advocates, however, are so invested in their position that they cannot follow the appropriate path and seek another explanation of what drives climate.

They have now learned not to make predictions that can be tested in our lifetimes. Politicians don’t worry about this though. They now make statements like the planet will be uninhabitable in 11 or 12 years as this is outside the election cycle.

So where do you stand, Stu? The science settled? The predicted scenarios too soon? Scary scenarios the way to go but way into the future when you will be long dead? Or respect the scientific method by abandoning hypothetical failure?

Stu, what you say about the RCPs is broadly correct. The problem for the IPCC is that the more likely RCPs don’t show any great problem for the planet over the remainder of the century, while 8.5 does the trick. The media never point out the extremely low probability of 8.5. It is enough that doom would come if its assumptions were correct. And, to repeat, they seem bizarre to me. We will see.

Chris, yes, broadly CO2 and temperature have gone up together over the longish haul. But not over the short haul. There were substantial periods where CO2 went up but temperature didn’t. So something else has been going on. I don’t know what it is, and the conventional explanation (whatever it means) is ‘natural variation’. And the effect of CO2 has mostly been taken up. There’s not much more to collect. The doubling goes from 280-560 (we are at 400+), then another doubling from 560-1120, and then another from 1120 to 2240. There is no sign of such movements.

And as others keep saying, (1) our capacity to predict the future well is weak ,and (2) warming is better than than cooling. What’s to to like?

For you to be really worried, you need to be able to show that warming is increasing t a huge rate, and that warming is bad for us all. That’s really quite an ask, it seems to me.

BJ, “At present they cannot do that, and it is stupid to destroy the system that does in the vague hope that “something will turn up”. So who exactly is proposing to destroy the system? What I see is agitation to be aware and make changes when possible. And as stated, renewables are now proving more cost effective than coal. Economics will dictate the future if we stop propping up the old ways. Remember we used to get around with chaff burning horse driven transport, but the economics of the internal combustion engine changed all that. Something similar is happening now but the reactionary forces are having a hard time coming to grips with that change. Time to move on.

There are plenty of warnings from engineers about the increasing instability of the system as the proportion of renewables increases. These might not destroy the system, but will make it unreliable. Imagine lying in hospital connected to a lifesaving machine when the voltage and frequency get wobbly.

And in what way was the South Australian government destroying a working power station, then being forced to buy in multiple diesel generators to cover the deficiency not destroying a working system?

Good to see your assessment that renewables are now more effective than coal. Does that include at night on a windless evening?

And now that renewables are cheaper, can we abolish the RET and the payments fossil generators make to renewable generators per kikowatt hour generated?

Curry blogger is not a suitable source. She accuses scientists of falsification and the IPCC of neglecting ?solar variations, volcanic eruptions, land use, ?large-scale ocean circulations, geothermal heat sources and other geologic processes ?and multi-decadal and longer term internal variability.

?She also claims that we simply do not have grounds for formulating a precise probability distribution when, in fact, all probability distributions generally have their precision clearly stated. Has Curry submitted her claim to any reputable academic statistical journal?

Curry asserts “?The paleoclimate record provides a rich source of information for developing future scenarios” but does not mention that such information needs to be adjusted for Milankovitch cycles and the past period when CO2 levels were above 400ppm was well before humans evolved.

She understands that “?… scientific theories … must be falsifiable” but seems to think this can be applied to scientific facts. Facts are not theories and the temperature rise following AGHG rise is a fact. It is also a fact that increasing environmental temperatures above 1C melts ice.

I assume she is entirely alone in holding that ?”…scientific theories can never be strictly verified”. All theories can be verified or not verified after subsequent well-considered work.

According to reputable scientists when CO2 increased 43% [185ppm-265ppm] and methane increased 80% [375ppb to 675ppb], the rise in temperature was 0.7C.

It seems plausible that each time CO2 increases by 43% and assuming a matching methane trend, that temperature rises around another 0.7C.

Of course (so far) this analysis does not account for the warming impact of increased water vapour and clouds.

Nature has been kind to the sceptics. The Earth hasn’t warmed as the models predicted although the concentration of CO2 has and that’s probably because the Sun won’t put out more light just because we emit more CO2

“All theories can be verified or not verified after subsequent well-considered work.”

My point is simple. You might be correct, but verifying a scientific theory can take a lot of work, and is not necessarily a fast process. My use of the Theory of Relativity was to illustrate that using a famous theory which even after many years of “well-considered work” still has questions about its universal applicability. Indeed you refer to an exception to its universal applicability (“excluding sub-atomic phenomena”).

Equilibrium climate sensitivity is well under 1 K/doubling when you remove real world solar and cyclical influences – which the IPCC doesn’t. Even Nick Lewis doesn’t take into account both of these natural forcings – only one of them. If he added in the other one it’d halve his number again, which would get it to about 0.8 K/doubling.

Anything under 1 K/doubling is completely harmless because of the logarithmic relationship. You’d need to emit 10 times as much CO2 as has ever been emitted in all of history to get 2 C more. Where would that much fossil fuel come from when we’re supposed to be near peak oil now? And another 2 C would be almost certainly harmless anyway.

As for methane the IPCC has been caught over-egging the data several times. Like this one from yesterday. Anyway if you look at the Cape Grim pCH4 data you’ll see the concentration plateauxed in the 2000’s then bumped up again with the shale gas boom. Before shale gas the methane oxidation was exactly balanced by emissions – so no increase at all. In short the IPCC has to underestimate CH4 oxidation and overestimate forcing for it to be even remotely important. And since ECS is low anyway methane is irrelevant.

Global warming isn’t happening in the real world data, and hasn’t for over two decades.

Chris, a logarithmic transformation is not a ‘description’ of the fact that a “relationship is not linear nor constant”. It is a clearly defined mathematical function, commonly used to convert suitable data into a linear form that is more readily interpreted and susceptible to further analysis.

Chris – ECS can be expressed as temperature increase for one doubling of pCO2. (It also can be expressed as a W/m^2 value, but I prefer the per doubling, or ?T 2xCO2, as it is easier for people to understand. If you search 2XCO2 you will see the definitions.)

So if ECS is 1 K/doubling that means rising from 400 ppmV now to 800 ppmV give a 1 C rise. Then from 800 ppmV to 1600 ppmV is another 1 C rise, for 2 C total.

Preindustrial pCO2 is generally considered be 280 ppmV. We are at about 400 ppmV now, thus a rise of 120. Therefore an additional rise of 2 C would require 1600-400=1200 ppmV more CO2. That is 10 times what hitherto has been emitted.

My calc is ECS is actually more like 0.7 K/doubling based on the long clean HadCET dataset. That is after the solar warming over 250 years and the ~60 year ocean cycle is accounted for.

The IPCC of course cites a 2XCO2 range of 2 to 4.5 K. But they ignore the solar warming due to cloud cover modulation and the ocean cycle (which you can see in the AMO, PDO, ENSO and several other datasets).

If you are going to measure CO2 from the pre-industrial level, you also have to measure temperature from that level. Iirc, we have had about an 0.8K increase in that time period, so your two doublings only take us to 1.2K above now.

As I read Bruce’s calcs, he is calculating for a 2K increase from now., not from pre industrial.

Noting that the increase from pre industrial includes some of the recovery from the MWP.

In general, a scientific law is the description of an observed phenomenon. It doesn’t explain why the phenomenon exists or what causes it. The explanation of a phenomenon is called a scientific theory. It is a misconception that theories turn into laws with enough research.

“In science, laws are a starting place,” said Peter Coppinger, an associate professor of biology and biomedical engineering at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. “From there, scientists can then ask the questions, ‘Why and how.”

Many people think that if scientists find evidence that supports a hypothesis, the hypothesis is upgraded to a theory and if the theory if found to be correct, it is upgraded to a law. That is no t how it works at all, though. In fact, facts, theories and laws — as well as hypotheses — are separate parts of the scientific method. Though they may evolve, they aren’t upgraded to something else.

“Hypotheses, theories and laws are rather like apples, oranges and kumquats: one cannot grow into another, no matter how much fertilizer and water are offered,” according to the University of California. A hypothesis is a limited explanation of a phenomenon; a scientific theory is an in-depth explanation of the observed phenomenon. A law is a statement about an observed phenomenon or a unifying concept, according to Kennesaw State University.

Water is a negative feedback, not a positive one. The IPCC climate scientists don’t understand chemistry of water and water vapour. (I’ve mainly worked in aqueous chemistry, including aqueous thermodynamics btw.)

When IR back radiation is absorbed by a CO2 or water molecule it raises temperature at ground level. That then vaporizes more water to approach the absolute humidity value – which goes up as the temperature goes up. The IR energy is converted to latent heat of vaporization.

Then the water vapour convects to the troposphere, condenses and releases the latent heat as IR again. Which is now radiated to space above about 75% of the CO2 in the air column. Furthermore additional condensation produces additional cloud cover, which diffracts incident solar radiation back out to space too. So you get a double cooling effect from water vapour.

The IPCC ensemble models are notorious for inefficiently modelling clouds – because if they did they’d disprove CO2 as the sole cause of warming last century.

I’m well aware of the IPCC estimates of ECS. They are ‘way too high because they do not include the ~60 year cycle in the oceans, which is clearly visible in the temperature data, nor do they include the overall forcing from the Sun. Indeed the value the IPCC uses for solar variation is only 0.05 W/m^2. So tiny as to be bonkers. Again they do that because if they use the true forcing from solar variance it would explain about half of the warming last century, thereby halving ECS derived from the models.

If you account for the ~60 year cycle and the solar warming you get this breakdown for warming last century, which is the period the IPCC ensemble modellers train their models to:

I’m using the median temperature rise from IPCC’s AR4 report, which was 0.74 C for the period 1906-2005. I can remember that one off the top of my head, haven’t looked at what AR5 says. If you look at the second link, which is detrended HadCRUT 3v, you can see that 1906 was the bottom of the cycle and 2005 the top of the cycle, so there’s an obvious artefact of about 0.3 C. The IPCC ignores it, even though the cycle is well known. Michael E. Mann has a paper on it showing it has been visible in the paleodata for at least the last millennium and is a feature of the thermohaline cycle.

That is why ECS is well under 1 K/doubling – because most of the warming last century was due to natural variations. They’re easily quantifiable if you just look at them, but that would overturn the global warming thing. Because both have now reversed course we have the pause in the real world temperatures, which is why snow cover trend is flat since 1994 as I linked upthread.

The IPCC view on water vapour is corroborated by all august science organisations I am aware of.

You need to point to refereed materials before contesting this.

NOAA says:

“As a greenhouse gas, the higher concentration of water vapor is then able to absorb more thermal IR energy radiated from the Earth, thus further warming the atmosphere. The warmer atmosphere can then hold more water vapor and so on and so on. This is referred to as a ‘positive feedback loop’.”

All the august science organisations I’m aware of are filled with bureaucrat types. I let my membership of RACI lapse a long time ago.

I don’t need to refer to referreed sources because I’m a chemist who works in this stuff. I’m arguing from first principles. Look up latent heat of vaporization. If you did chemistry in high school you probably had it covered.

I model aqueous processes in great detail, which includes the steam tables and chemical activity calcs. It pays well. I am bemused by the lack of understanding of the simple water molecule from the IPCC people.

“The amount of energy absorbed by a water molecule from back radiation would not be sufficient to then vapourise more water molecules.”

Are you kidding? Three quarters of the Earth’s surface is ocean. As you increase surface temperature thermodynamic equilibration causes higher carrying capacity of the atmosphere for water vapour. Thermodynamic equilibriation means the ocean will absorb heat to evaporate water to meet the thermodynamic partition coefficient for the higher temperature. This is standard physical chemistry. You raise the temperature, more water evaporates. Mixing is good at the surface due to waves and spray and etc.

In the phase change from liquid to gas the H2O molecules absorb latent heat. That heat is hidden from GHGs as the water vapour physically convects upwards. Storm cell updrafts and etc. Then is released at altitude at the same wavelengths it was absorbed at – ie the greenhouse wavelengths. It goes to space.

As for the “accurate observations” they are all adjusted temperatures. All of them, even UAH and RSS.

That is why I linked the NH snow extent anomaly data. NH snow extent anomaly is the measure of the zero Celcius geographical isotherm in the northern hemisphere relative to the average. (We don’t have enough land in the southern hemisphere for meaningful data, geography is what it is.)

Snow extent is easy to measure from satellite pictures. It does not need any adjustment, you just read off the pixels. So it is a primary proxy, whereas all the temperature datasets are actually secondary proxies in reality.

Because the zero C isotherm trend has not changed for over two decades the real world temperature has not actually changed. The melting point of water is not subject to the will of men. (You can see the snow extent source data here.)

Indeed the oceans are the flywheels of climate and temperature has never followed CO2 up or down for the past 500 million years, but why are we having this arcane scientific debate with ever more complicated answers when the temperature hasn’t gone up much in the first place
I’m intrigued how banks are so altruistic about climate and economists are continually urging immediate action. They’re not so strident about saving whales. In other words they’re pushing reforms and they don’t want us to know the real reasons. It matters because farmers were excoriated by city commentators for being subsidised yet those same commentators want us to buy subsidised electricity from their inefficient windmills

More unbelievable adjustments to the BOM Acorn 2 data. These blokes must have been following some of the HAD Crut 4 adjustments after Jones’s 2010 BBC interview.
And all this after BOM’s Acorn 1 adjustments just a few years ago. Then they claimed it was world’s best practice.

I suggested that you look up the Greens’policy for the coming election. From memory (I respect my sanity too much to go back to it) it proposes that thermal coal be phased out, both for domestic use and export between 2020 and 2030. That means no more coal fired power.

The Greens also oppose exploration for and extraction of natural and coal seam gas, so we can’t follow the US and increase the use of gas fired power stations.

The Greens also oppose construction of new dams either for storage or hydro power, so what hydro we have is all we will have.

The Greens also oppose nuclear power.

That leaves the unreliable solar and wind power systems to power most of the nation. Tough luck if you are linked to that lifesaving machine in hospital at midnight on a still night.

What is your (practical) solution for your children and grand children?

BJ, please tell me, how well do you understand our political system? Do you really expect the Greens to be elected to govern, or even to hold the balance of power. Get real. What they propose does actually make sense but is extremely unlikely to be implemented any time soon. So it does not matter what they say, except as an influencer of popular opinion over time.

Do you really think the powers that be will leave us with a system where continuous power is not guaranteed? By the time we get to full renewable power, which we will eventually, all the problems you postulate will be answered.

Once again, what you exhibit is classic reactionary response. Get used to it, the only constant is change. What you take to be normal, fossil fueled power, is a relatively recent phenomena and a new normal is on the horizon.

As I have written before the future outcome will be decided by engineerng, economics and accounting not hysteria. The age of fhe coal fetishists is coming to an end. Get used to it.

“BJ, please tell me, how well do you understand our political system? Do you really expect the Greens to be elected to govern, or even to hold the balance of power.”

I understand the system well enough to know that the Greens exert inordinate power. At their behest, albeit with support from Labor, gas exploration has essentially been banned in NSW, Victoria and SA. Not just CSG, but also conventional gas exploration. Dams do not get built because green lawfare makes that impossible. Nuclear power will be introduced in Australia only over their screaming protests and much more lawfare.

You say what they propose makes sense. Do you mean by 2030, or in the distant future? Please tell us how much will need to be spent on renewables, HV cables to connect them to the grid, and the storage/batteries to provide the reliable power to run Australia in 2030. Remember that solar and wind have quite low capacity factors compared to their nameplate capacity, so allow for that.

“Do you really think the powers that be will leave us with a system where continuous power is not guaranteed?”

You might like to ask the people of SA about that, the AEMO has also expressed concern about the supply.

” By the time we get to full renewable power, which we will eventually, all the problems you postulate will be answered.”

A circular argument. If those problems have not been answered we will not get to full renewable power. A more pertinent question is when this desiderata will be achieved.

“As I have written before the future outcome will be decided by engineerng, economics and accounting not hysteria.”

I certainly hope so, but the extent to which engineering is being ignored, and economics and accounting are being perverted by massive cross subsidies from fossil fuelled power sources to renewables does not give me much hope.

If I could attempt summarise your proposal, it seems to be “If I close my eyes very tight, and wish very hard, everything will be OK”

I don’t know about your grand children, but I think mine deserve better than well meaning wishes. I will offer some thoughts of my own later tonight or tomorrow, depending on when I find time.

BJ,
Too hard to respond in detail with only a phone at my disposal right now. But in short I can sum up your points in a single word “pessimist”. All your points can be answered easily. Such as CSG is on the nose with landholders in general, who generally are not greenies at all. Nuclear is a joke in our context, too expensive, too slow to deploy (but personally I would love to see it introduced), therefore not an option.

You mock SA but I think you will find things more robust than you claim.

Engineering is not being ignored, the new crop of engineers are leading the way. The fossils of the past naturally stick to the familiar and tried and true, but economics is leaving them behind.

Have you actually looked at the performance of the latest wind technology and cost base of solar PV? Roll in pumped hydro and the leap in battery technology etc and you have game changing stuff. Of course we will not move over night to fully renewable. The existing, written down coal fired capacity is still functional, but there is no sign of new investment without government subsidy, an ironic twist in the current debate.

SA is so “robust” that they want a new interconnector across to NSW to add to the one to Victoria, and thence to Tasmania. Would adding the cost of this new infrastructure to the cost of renewables affect their economics?

First, I agree with you that “the future outcome [should] be decided by engineerng, economics and accounting not hysteria.”

First, the engineering. All technologies must be treated equally.

Legislation must specify the voltage and frequency of the electricity to be provided by any generator operating in the market. The responsibility for meeting these specifications must lie with the generator.

Generators must also meet a reliability criterion. To avoid cherry picking times to suit particular technologies, the time against reliability will be measured must cover at least a 24 hour period. Failure to deliver continuous power across the period must incur penalties equivalent to the economic damage caused.

Generators must provide at their expense the transmission systems to connect their generators to the existing national grid. If someone wants to build a nuclear power station at Lightning Ridge, they pay for the link to the national grid. Same for a solar or wind farm there.

Next the accounting. There must be no cross subsidies between technologies. All must get the same taxation concessions.

Finally the economics. Purchases of output must be on a best price for the period. Failure to deliver, including failure to meet the specifications, must incur penalties commensurate with the economic damage caused.

One final point you did not mention, penalties must apply to all technologies for, as an example, death or injury to protected species.

Battery technology is as old and as stagnant as solar, both concentrating (Archimedes) and photovoltaics (known for 2 centuries and first patented 119 years ago) and wind (the 17thC was the age of wind). Wind and solar produce power about 20% of the time. Batteries produce power 0% of the time and store power at great cost since it is always energy intensive to convert one form of power such as current into another such as chemical or gravity. Renewables with or without batteries are a sick and horrendously expensive joke; even more so since they are justified by a completely failed theory: which is human CO2 controls the climate on this planet, a notion so absurd, so scientifically ridiculous it was bound to be a success amongst the media, politicians and the UN with its third rate academics who are liars (as revealed by the CRU email scandal) and whose IPCC reports are mainly authored by green activists.

“Do you really think the powers that be will leave us with a system where continuous power is not guaranteed? By the time we get to full renewable power, which we will eventually, all the problems you postulate will be answered.”

Stu – There is no realistic answer to the intermittency of wind + solar. You need at least a week of storage, maybe even a month to reasonably expect guaranteed grid electricity. The cost and the energy equivalent of that amount of storage is huge. The CO2e of the equipment would be enormous. Even if you used pumped storage the sheer number of GWh is so gigantic for a week in the AEMO market area that I think there wouldn’t be enough physical sites up and down the Great Dividing range to build it all. A week of electricity for all except WA would be about 6,000 GWh. That would be 60,000 Tesla batteries like Sth Australia bought. That’s about $6 trillion worth. Yes, trillion. Which would require another $6 trillion each 8-10 years to replace the batteries as they expire.

I am an R&D guy. It’s my job to look at a problem, consider chemistry, physics and economics, and propose an answer to the problem. I’ve done this for billion dollar projects over multiple decade time horizons. The only possible answer to this one, if you assume CAGW, is nuclear.

I appreciate this comment may be off-topic, but not so far off if we are considering the future. I refer to an article in ‘The Conversation’ that proposed, apparently seriously, that Muslims should be provided with ‘safe spaces’ (presumably majority Muslim areas) in which they would be free from ‘Islamophobia’. My reaction varied from astonishment to mirth at the depths to which intellectual discourse in Australia has sunk.

“Large scale solar and wind cover about 10 sq km per 100 MW. That 100MW is installed capacity which is what the installation would produce if working at 100MW 24/7. We know wind and solar actually only produce about 20% of the time which is called the capacity factor and is what the wind or solar averages in actual production over a year expressed as a % of the installed capacity. So that is 20MW per 10 sq km.

Eraring, the biggest and best coal fired power plant is 2800 MW which is what it produces 24/7.

So for wind and solar to produce an Eraring equivalent or 2800 MW would be 2800/20 X 10 = 1400 sq km.

And that’s not considering the intermittency of wind and solar which means you never know when it is going to produce that 20% over the year.

Also wind and solar produce direct current which has to be converted to alternating current at an infrastructure cost which is not much less than the cost of the wind and solar installations themselves which is about $500 million per 100MW of installed capacity or 20 MW of capacity factor.

So for wind and solar to produce the 2800 MW of Eraring would cost $500 million X 5 X 28 = $70 billion plus infrastructure cost such as converting DC to AC and grid connection in far flung places where wind and solar are located; so add about another $50 billion.

Boambee John thanks for your sane info but don’t expect Stu or Chris to take any notice of proper data and evidence.
They love their fantasy world and nothing will change their religious devotion to their CAGW cult.
Chris sometimes claims to understand and then he switches and starts to fall back to his silly religious dogma about “doing something” at a cost of endless billions $ flushed straight down the drain. All for ZERO change.
This stupidity changes daily and he refuses to even understand very simple maths and science or try to understand the audited data from the EIA and the IEA. Very easy to understand, but for them always a bridge too far.

You guys make me laugh. You assume the worst case scenario from the IPCC and run it as the projection. Then you turn around and always assume the worst case scenario for change, i.e. a total switch to wind and solar. Get real please.

Meantime this article in reneweconomy.com.au is enlightening

“In the first summer after Hazelwood shut (the blue bars), it was mainly black coal and gas that filled the gap. But in the most recent summer gas generation had actually dropped below the levels when Hazelwood was operating. Also hydro generation had not changed, while black coal had ceded some of the gains it achieved in the 2017?18 summer.

Meanwhile, within the space of two summers a range of wind and solar farms had managed to move from investment decision to generating power.

One should also give credit to thousands of households and businesses that added nearly 2,500 megawatts of solar to their rooftops since Engie announced it would close Hazelwood.

The installation of this extra wind and solar capacity meant they generated 2,821 gigawatt?hours more electricity than the summer of 2016?17. This almost completely filled the decline in brown coal output of 2,908 gigawatt?hours over this summer compared to 2016?17.

Now of course this extra electricity isn’t much good if it doesn’t come at the time we most need it. The time-frame during which demand in the NEM is its highest almost always falls between 11.30am and 5.30pm over summer.

Figure 2 below shows the average amount of capacity provided by renewables in this time period relative to other fuel types over the summer when Hazelwood was in place (2016?17) and last summer.

Black coal towers over all the other fuel types, but the amount of capacity it provided this most recent summer is barely higher than what it was when Hazelwood was operating. Meanwhile gas is lower.

Instead it has been growth of renewables ? and in particular solar – that has filled the gap from the loss of Hazelwood. Brown coal delivered 1,400 megawatts less capacity on average over the 11.30am to 5.30pm peak this summer, compared to the 2016?17 summer. Meanwhile renewables delivered an additional 2,000MW.”

This blog does not handle graphs and tables so you will have to go to the source to get the full picture. Not as dire as you maintain.

Further you throw in the common canard of “throwing away billions”. All these current wind and solar projects are based on rational economic decisions regarding the investment. I know, I have money invested in similar schemes. And the sooner the black crap stops falling on my house from the mines, coal dumps and power stations the better.

Stu everything you’ve just stated is ridiculous. Electricity is just one part of the equation, but just look at the EIA, IEA data to understand the problem. BTW OZ emits just 1.2% of global co2 emissions.
Then look at the RS report and actually do the sums and you’ll find that this S&W fra-d will not make a scrap of difference to your so called CAGW this century or many centuries into the future.
That’s if the entire world stopped co2 emissions today and I’ve recently shown that developing countries co2 emissions are soaring into the future. Stop your stupid comments and do some reading for a change.
BTW even Dr Hansen understands that S&W are just fairy tales and he is promoting nuclear power as the energy of the future. But that still doesn’t replace fossil fuels in all the other sectors of the world economy.

“Then look at the RS report and actually do the sums and you’ll find that this S&W fra-d will not make a scrap of difference to your so called CAGW this century or many centuries into the future.”

You see you still don’t get it. Even the best outcome of Paris (which is virtually impossible) will not stop temperature rise, it is now built in. The IPCC get that and acknowedge that the 1.5 degree goal would require atmospheric carbon scrubbing that has not even been invented.

The goal is to lower the eventual rate of increase. But don’t you worry your pretty little head about that, you will be dead, but probably not forgotten as a coal fetishist and climate change pariah.

Chris states that he is a former senior research officer (other context makes it clear he was in the APS). I have asked him a couple of times whether he was a scientific or a policy research officer, he has not responded.

However, his comments about and obvious ignorance of logarithmic scales clearly provide the answer. No wonder we have so much bad government policy!

A new 2019 study from the Royal Met Society finds that the UHIE is about 1.7 c across the UK. T min is about 1.9 c and T max 1.25 c. Why do they always forget about this disparity when making claims about their so called CAGW?

“You guys make me laugh. You assume the worst case scenario from the IPCC and run it as the projection. Then you turn around and always assume the worst case scenario for change, i.e. a total switch to wind and solar. Get real please.”

When Shorten claims; “each year there are more extreme weather events like droughts and floods” with no idea if any of that possible increase over and above natural climate variability is applicable to our CO2 emissions, his billions spent on certain non- solution of a likely non-problem far exceed any possible cost of these weather events.

It’s the usual blithering bed-wetting about the alarmist precautionary principle.

But what you always fail to understand, blith, is that paying a premium every year that is many times the value of that which you are insuring is the very essence of economic stupidity.

Particularly when there is very good evidence that these so-called extreme weather events are in fact reducing. In spite of MSM.

Yes SD and your link just proves that there were plenty of stupid idiots way back in 1871. The difference is the poor taxpayer didn’t have to fund those clueless layabouts.
Trouble is today the con merchants are helping to run the show and fleecing the vulnerable at every opportunity. And zero change to weather or climate at a great cost and Chris and Stu couldn’t care less.

Jo Nova pulls apart Labor’s EV idiocy. Nobody wants to buy these stupid vehicles and they total about 0.2% of the vehicles sold here every year. What silly fool would ever vote for these fra-dsters and con merchants?

“This makes no sense on so many levels: in Australia EV’s are 80% fossil fuel powered and over their lifetime they cause more pollution than internal combustion engines. Electric Vehicles produce more carbon emissions if the grid that charges them is powered by fossil fuels.”

How can Nova be so crazy – no-one intends to run EV’s on fossil fuel powered sources of electricity.

Is this really the level of your understanding and analysis?

Stop being a conduit of denialist stupidity.

You are just showing yourself to be blind to what proper sources are indicating and ignorant of what sensible, knowledgeable people are proposing.

Running EV’s on fossil fuel electricity is not anyone’s strategy – It is a base provocation from junk denialist bloggers.

Neville, it seems our blith believes in the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy:

Jim Hansen, Al Gore’s climate advisor and the scientist who literally started the global warming worry in 1988 puts it clearly: “Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.”

Hansen was at least realistic enough to know it can’t happen without nuclear.

So, good for the average, but what about the longer trips? Australia is a big country, even after many years of development, petrol stations can still be few and far between in places.

On storage technology, see posts by Bruce of Newcastle and cohenite above. The costs would be horrendous without significant technological improvements. Is it really wise to proceed on the Micawber principle that “something will turn up”?

A good friend of mine who is an established EV user for several yeas now mostly charges his car from his house battery overnight and which recharges during the day from his solar PV cells, plus running the house. This stuff works even though coal fetishists don’t believe it. Meantime guys, look at europe, the world is changing. Will it happen overnight like you seem to panic about? No, of course not, but the trend is obvious. Sure we are in a different position due to our cheap coal resource, but it has to be dug up and transported. And as for our tiny per centage contribution if world CO2, so what. Look at Denmark, Sweden, norway etc and what they are doing. We could of course continue to be climate change pariahs.

Chris, sometimes you write stuff that seems quite empty of sense: ‘How can Nova be so crazy – no-one intends to run EV’s on fossil fuel powered sources of electricity.’

It doesn’t matter what they intend to do, they can’t help running their EVs on fossil fuels — coal, which provides 76 per cent of eastern grid power, and gas/oil, which provide another 9 per cent. That’s 85 per cent of grid electricity. These proportions will only change slowly over time. When is that you think people will be able to power their EVs from ‘alternative energy?

At present levels of knowledge, alternative energy sources cannot provide sufficient power to enable a society like ours to work.

“Bill Shorten wants Australia to match the electric vehicle penetration of Norway, where taxpayers fork out a $3400 annual subsidy for every EV on the road, but has refused to say when Labor would introduce tough new ­vehicle standards to drive his transport revolution.

The Opposition Leader, who has set a target of 50 per cent of new car sales to be electric by 2030, yesterday declared Labor would transform the nation’s car market to drive the uptake of more fuel-­efficient vehicles in the same way the market for rooftop solar had changed over the past decade.

Hopefully, Morrison can capitalise on Left wing stupidity in a similar fashion:

“New York Democrat Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal (GND) scheme, which includes phasing out coal, oil, natural gas, most vehicles, and cows, failed miserably when put to a vote in the U.S. Senate. Incredibly, not even one of the twelve Democrat Senate sponsors of the GND resolution voted to advance it. Perhaps that is because not only is the GND bad policy, but it is also bad politics. Now, Republicans should capitalize on this ridiculous proposal.”

The level of pig ignorance we hear from Chris and Stu is mind boggling. SD is correct ( AGAIN) and Dr Hansen was correct when he stated that Paris 21 was just BS and fra-d and that S&W are fairy tales.
Even Hansen knows that nuclear or hydro would be the only reliable option for coal fired energy, but our blog fools think you can run a country on unreliable so called renewables.
The IEA and EIA audits tell us the true story but ignorant pollies, media and many scientists refuse to understand these simple sums.
I thought we lived in an age of science not an age of witchcraft and silly superstitions? The Shorten fool was interviewed by Bolt a few months ago and talked about some of his so called mitigation plans, yet he refused to answer Bolt about the impact this would make and when we would see a change. But he promised he would get back to him.
Alas that didn’t happen and we now see this ignorant nonsense from Labor with NO cost /benefit analysis at all.
How could any party get away with this fra-dulent behaviour when the cost is close to 500 billion dollars? The Menzies Centre is using their own analysis by Dr Fisher and his costing ( so far) is about 474 bn $.
Of course silly Chris and Stu couldn’t care less about this fra-dulent waste of time and money for a guaranteed ZERO return on the “investment”. They’re more concerned about their religious dogma and silly superstitions.
I’m sure Don will have his say on this so called mitigation and I await a post here before we go to the polls in May. Good luck with your analysis Don.

You have not heard of the logarithmic effect of rising carbon dioxide levels on temperature? I am amazed first at your conclusion that “we get 1°C for every 93-94 ppm increase in CO2”. That demonstrates to me that you really do not know what you are talking about.

Chris please tell us how to change or slow down the growth in co2 emissions? And then tell us by how much and when we could expect a change in temp and co2 levels? Would it be in a thousand years or many thousands of years and your calcs showing your data?
IOW provide verifiable data to prove your claims and you’d better book your flight to the developing world because they’re not listening. Without them you’ve got NOTHING.

So no data or evidence, just more wishful thinking? Oh and the developing world are okay with your ideas as well? Listen to Mark Mills link to understand the real PHYSICAL world and forget about your fantasies because NATURE doesn’t care.

Neville once again misrepresenting and misquoting. “ The level of pig ignorance we hear from Chris and Stu is mind boggling. SD is correct ( AGAIN) and Dr Hansen was correct when he stated that Paris 21 was just BS and fra-d and that S&W are fairy tales.
Even Hansen knows that nuclear or hydro would be the only reliable option for coal fired energy, but our blog fools think you can run a country on unreliable so called renewables.“

No one is saying the move has to be immediate. Clearly it is an evolutionary and aspirational goal of the realists in the room. Obviously, fully depreciated coal power units are cheap to run and will continue to be maintained while economic to do so. But around the world business is finding it cheaper to provide new power with other technologies. Are they still constructing new coal fired plants in India and China, yes, it takes time to wind back the process. Here it is estimated it takes 8 years to get a new coal station up and running so I assume the gestation is similar in China. In any event the number planned is being wound back.

It is a brave man who predicts future technology too far out. Examples of failure include Thomas Watson and Bill Gates and in company terms Kodak, inventing the digital camera then ignoring it. We just dont know how the current research to improve and lessen the cost of renewables will go and what breakthroughs will occur with storage technologies. But if Neville and co want to stick doggedly with the 19th century technology of power generation (albeit improved and still improving) fine.

As for nuclear, show me a politician in Australia willing to even suggest it. It remains political poison for all the wrong reasons, but is a fact. Then there is the lead time and apparant cost penalty with that technology.

BJ, my understanding is a home charger requirement can vary between single phase 16 amp circuit through to 3 phase 32 amp. The resulting power into the vehicle varies from 3.6kW to 16.5kW for the 32 amp version. There are many levels between, so it depends on what service a house has or can get, and the resultant time to charge. Tesla measure the result in km/hr and that therefore varies from 15 at the low end to 67 at the high end.

My friend generally recharges via his in house Tesla wall and solar panels, so cheap after the capital cost is absorbed.

Not sure about the “average house” amps. I do know my aircon needs a 40amp 3 phase circuit.

As for multiple houses close by I dont know. But we are so far from that being a problem with a penetration rate for EV’s in the market of less than one per cent that it will not be an issue for a long time. Evolution again. And as above if the average Joe uses his own battery most of the time not an issue.

Here’s that quote again from the Manhattan Institute study. Please read that last paragraph and think about it. Physicist Mark Mills is correct that S&W energy is a mission impossible.

Batteries, electric motors, phones, solar, wind etc also use some rare earth materials that are often mined under terrible third world standards, but that doesn’t seem to worry Labor or the Greens either.

“This “new energy economy” rests on the belief—a centerpiece of the Green New Deal and other similar proposals both here and in Europe—that the technologies of wind and solar power and battery storage are undergoing the kind of disruption experienced in computing and communications, dramatically lowering costs and increasing efficiency. But this core analogy glosses over profound differences, grounded in physics, between systems that produce energy and those that produce information.

In the world of people, cars, planes, and factories, increases in consumption, speed, or carrying capacity cause hardware to expand, not shrink. The energy needed to move a ton of people, heat a ton of steel or silicon, or grow a ton of food is determined by properties of nature whose boundaries are set by laws of gravity, inertia, friction, mass, and thermodynamics—not clever software.

This paper highlights the physics of energy to illustrate why there is no possibility that the world is undergoing—or can undergo—a near-term transition to a “new energy economy.”

A rather stark set of examples including:

* The annual output of Tesla’s Gigafactory, the world’s largest battery factory, could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of materials are mined, moved, and processed for every pound of battery produced”.

Note the words “near term” in his paper. Once again the lemmings are runnIng off assuming it is suggested we do this “tomorrow”.

“This paper highlights the physics of energy to illustrate why there is no possibility that the world is undergoing—or can undergo—a near-term transition to a “new energy economy.”

The idea is to START the transition as $ and means allow. Of course that still threatens the vested interests such as Exxon and the Koch brothers, so much money at stake.

The right wing in USA is in panic mode over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she terrifies them because she represents the start of a new movement of active Democrat politicians pushing for change and accountability. They are trying to take her down as a warning to others. And, a bit like here, she is misquoted.

Her Green New Deal is about 40 pages long, is vague and aspirational, not prescriptive. Yet the Republicans, and the Murdoch arm of the same party (Fox), are saying she is going to ban planes, children, cows and hamburgers etc. All of which is total rubbish, but typical. AOC is a first term freshman politician in the House of Reps and is getting more air time than the candidates for the presidency, crazy stuff.

The funny thing is they, including Trump, use social media to attack her but she is proving more adept than them with the tools and it usually backfires on them.

Not bad for a 29 year ex bar maid, who is the incarnation of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot all at once, a communist, a socialist a Nazi. Her knockers can’t even sort that out. She is of course university educated having graduated with honours from Boston University and really smart. She has asked more questions, and really challenging ones, of witnesses before Committee than the guy she replaced did in two decades. She is a force. I think Zalli might be on 5he same track here. Bring it on.

“The right wing in USA is in panic mode over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she terrifies them because she represents the start of a new movement of active Democrat politicians pushing for change and accountability. They are trying to take her down as a warning to others. And, a bit like here, she is misquoted.”

I think that you will find that many Demorats, including Nancy Pelosi, are not entirely enthusiastic about AOC.

I agree, Pelosi and others are scrambling to keep up and to manage her. The thing is that her success has encouraged the development of a lot more like her to run in the primaries next time round. The conventional party funders (Wall St etc} are not to keen either. But in general it is the Repubs that are most concerned. Polling shows wide spread support for many of the economic and social issues she is championing. Change is afoot.

“The UAH and RSS groups aren’t the only ones trying to estimate the temperature of the atmosphere. We also have direct measurements made by temperature sensors on weather balloons, for example. These are generally in good agreement with the MSU lower atmosphere temperature estimates, until recent years. Since the turn of the century, the UAH and RSS datasets show little warming of lower tropospheric temperatures, while weather balloons show continued warming. For example, Sherwood et al. (2015) concluded that the weather balloon data “contradicts suggestions that atmospheric warming has slowed in recent decades or that it has not kept up with that at the surface.”

Similarly, a weather balloon dataset from NOAA called RATPAC shows a growing divergence from the satellite lower troposphere temperature estimates over the past several years.“ – skepticalscience.com

And after all it is on the surface where we all live. So I think I will stick with the data from actual thermometers all around the world including those in weather balloons. And they show a warming trend as do the world oceans.

Further, Roy Spencer is a noted skeptic of the effects of CO2 and AGW, which could perhaps influence his research.

The satellite data on which Spencer relies is not from “thermometers in space”. It is an unreliable, difficult to assess, and highly processed data set from microwave receivers and using MODELS, god forbid!

Our stu would rather accept the “science” of John Cook, the fabricator of the “97%” lie based on less than 0.3%
than that of Roy Spencer.

What you are in denial of, stu, with land thermometers, is that if you build a single brick wall in the bush and put a thermometer on either side of it in the regulation Stevenson screens you will get a 1 degree difference in temperature.

Imagine what difference the world’s 21st century infrastructure makes to natural temperatures?

And guess which direction it is in?

But the gatekeepers deny this increase.

So that less-than-1c warming since the LIA is looking pretty questionable as a “catastrophe”.

As I have said many times; Add Nat Var to UHIE and it would far exceed the observed temp increase since 1850.

ACO2 could well be causing cooling.

No system is correct when it tries to measure global temperature.

The noise is always greater than the signal.

But still you SJWs insist on destroying our life savings to non-solve a likely non-problem.

Hopefully the Aussie Battlers will see you for the frauds you really are and vote accordingly.

Stu what about Greenland, Antarctica+ peninsula, SLR and no hot spot above the equator etc? Oh and there are now 3 to 4 times more polar bears today than 50+ years ago. It turns out they’ve thrived and so have the seals etc that they feed on. Also Gore doesn’t seem to understand that polar bears are exceptional swimmers?
And the IPCC’s chosen HAD Crut 4 data has also been heavily adjusted after Jones’s 2010 interview.

But their fabled hot spot is a real problem for their enhanced warming over the tropics. Prof Humlum has looked at all the data and found very slight warming at 9 km height and slight cooling at 12 km. Just another nail in the coffin for their theory of CAGW over the last 40 years.
It looks like Lindzen’s studies are holding up very well. Here’s the Humlum link.

Along with the ongoing heat/flood/fire/cyclone traumas hitting Australia, global Lower troposphere temperatures being issued by University of Alabama also show a very strong consistent warming trend of 1.25°C per century. This is the result of averaging over 30 years to get an indicator of climate change not just weather.

We can be very confident in this figure as the Pearson Coefficient is a serious 0.93.

We now have 12 data points for 30 year averages from UoA data starting from 1979-2008 [30 yr] and ending at 1990-2019.

If you run the same exercise but combining Jan, Feb, and March, the Pearson Coefficient INCREASES to 0.95 with a greater warming trend of 1.33°C.

You can extract this result yourself by charting the 30 year averages (JFM) here [12 data]:

BJ,
“PS, still not found time to comment on my thoughts posted at 2010 on Sunday night?”

I can not be bothered, wasting my time here again. Unlike you I actually check out all the references you blokes put up and the knock offs, of which there is no shortage. Net result most of your stuff is dodgy science at best.

I am staggered that so many ‘intelligent’ people agonise about their grandchildren living in a world that ‘may’ be marginally warmer than today, but completely ignore the threat of Balkanisation of Australian cities, advocated by academics (see above), that would have a far more immediate effect on their lifestyle and welfare. Talk about heads in the sand. The world won’t end in twelve years, despite the assertions of a woman described by ‘Blonde’ as an “ethnically ambiguous twenty something, with a ninety IQ and hot tits”.

Neville, if you watch her performance in Congress, she has good research, and is adept at what she knows, but if she is left on her own, she is hopeless. There are many instances of complete stupidity.

So what about the coming apocalypse by 2031 Bryan? Anyone who truly believes or follows such religious extremism should be ignored and at least offered counselling.
But I suspect she has quite a few followers among the Dems and majority support in her electorate.
They may as well be living in the age of witch burning and a fear of the Gods of thunder and lightening.
But it seems that’s now part of the demise of our so called modern education system.

Another example of nothing at all to worry about, because the earth is not warming, a few degrees don’t matter, she will be right mate, yeah.

“The dramatic loss of ice in the Arctic is influencing sea-ice transport across the Arctic Ocean. As experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research report in a new study, today only 20 percent of the sea ice that forms in the shallow Russian marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean actually reaches the Central Arctic, where it joins the Transpolar Drift; the remaining 80 percent of the young ice melts before it has a chance to leave its ‘nursery’. Before 2000, that number was only 50 percent. According to the researchers, this development not only takes us one step closer to an ice-free summer in the Arctic; as the sea ice dwindles, the Arctic Ocean stands to lose an important means of transporting nutrients, algae and sediments. The new study will be released as a freely accessible Open Access article in the online journal Scientific Reports on 2 April 2019.”

Oh another good laugh with the junk science from realclimatescience. Have a look at the dates of the data there, 2017, and that is not all that is dodgy. Check out NOAA latest data, they have more cred. While you are it check our the recent , ie March, weather and temperature data for Alaska.

What strikes me most about Stu and Chris is the tremendous energy with which they trawl the internet, searching out items that support their world view, which they then post here hoping to convert the heathen.

News for the two of you. The internet is an almost infinite resource. You can akways find another link to “support” your position. News for Chris, this is not “research”, it is (not very effective) propaganda.

Think about what you find, compare it with what is actually visible around you. Then come to a reasoned conclusion. Then try reasoned argument, rather than personal abuse.

BJ says “What strikes me most about Stu and Chris is the tremendous energy with which they trawl the internet, searching out items that support their world view”.

What a laugh. Stuff in support of our argument is overflowing on the internet and science circles in general. The only place trawling is required is in support of the narrow field of view of the denier sphere. Places like Nova, whatsup and realclimate etc. of course those nutters have already done the trawling for you. Problem is they only dredge up dead fish. But have fun, events may overtaking you and I look forward to the walkback.

Oh another good laugh with the junk science from realclimatescience. Have a look at the dates of the data there, 2017, and that is not all that is dodgy. Check out NOAA latest data, they have more cred. While you are it check our the recent , ie March, weather and temperature data for Alaska.